A movement particularly in American psychology, which calls for an
explanation of the behavior of organisms in terms of
relations between
input s and
outputs, in psychological terms, between stimuli and responses, in sociological terms, between independent and dependent
variables. Behaviorists minimize the importance of mental or creative processes and believe that a system's output is uniquely determined by past and present inputs. The inclusion of an organism's internal
state, predispositions,
memory or mediating variables in behaviorist explanations does not modify this basic contention. Behaviorist explanations exclude cognitive CONSTRUCTIONs, circularities such as
self-reference and the
generative processes of mental activity (
see intelligence ). Behaviorism is also manifest in numerous analytical techniques, e.g., in efforts to explain one variable in terms of other variables by means of regression equations. (
krippendorff )
